Robert Phillips.

I do agree the concept of ‘Rights’ has been greatly abused. Obviously, as our society more and more denies the LORD as Creator, the rights become merely a social construct as determined by man instead of God.

Unlike our eternal God, Man is fluid; here one day and gone the next, blown away like chaff. So are man-given ‘rights’.

Jeremy Peet

God Bless, Robert Phillips

It seems ‘the grey area is slowly disappearing and what will be left soon is only black and white’. Moral relativity is the precursor of much of the depravity we see happening in society. The Bible calls it lawlessness’. Any nation that divorces the Lord Jesus Christ and the absolute perfection and authority of the Bible in all matters will result in what we now are seeing. We need to kindle a passion in our churhes and homes so that when moral relativity arises we will stand and declare the truth unashamedly. Too many Christians that I know are silent about the moral terrorism that is taking place. We need to light the flame of truth!

1 Peter 3:15-17 (ESV): ‘but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.’

Vasko Kalapac

Robert, I understand you might also be mixing two different categories of human ‘rights’.

The first bills of rights in modern history were actually conceived by Christians who attempted to solve the problem of political tyranny. These are basic rights dealing with Lord Acton’s aphorism that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A constant in the understanding of these rights is a preoccupation with the preservation of natural rights to life, liberty and property, ensuring the possibility of civil resistance against such tyranny.

A new generation of rights, however, has appeared in more recent years. They cover ‘group rights’ and follow not biblical principles but rather the idea of ‘social evolution’. Naturally, these ‘group rights’ are of a distinct nature when compared with the basic rights revealed by the first modern charters of rights.

In fact, sociology professor Alvin J. Schmidt points out: “Group rights that determine a person rights on the basis of belonging to a given ethnic or racial group, as presently advocated by multiculturalists and by affirmative action laws, nullify the rights of the individual. Group rights greatly reduce the freedom of the individual in that this rights stem only from the group; if he does not belong to the group, his rights are greatly curtailed… When group rights get the upper hand, gone are the ‘unalienable rights’ given to the individual by his Creator so admirably expressed in the American Declaration of Independence”.

In the thirteenth century, Franciscan nominalists were the first philosophers to elaborate legal theories of God-given rights, as basic rights derived from a natural order sustained by God’s immutable laws of ‘right reason’.

These medieval priests, who vehemently defended the papal primacy, nevertheless reminded their readers that ‘it is allowed to no one to act against natural law’. An imposing line of medieval Christian thinkers was that the political ruler is bound by the law, as he is a citizen exercising a governmental function and liable to be called to account for his deeds “as any subject who has broken the law”.

The notion that law and basic human rights are inseparable comes from the fact that God has revealed his ‘higher law’ and, accordingly, this law must be placed above any governmental will. As such, liberty is found under the law of God, because, as the Holy Scriptures declares: ‘The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul’ (Psa19:7). This also means that everyone have the moral obligation to lawfully disobey any statutory provision that perverts God’s law, because the objective of civil government is to establish a godly order of justice and freedom.

As for our British constitutional tradition, in declaring the equality of human souls in the sight of God, Christianity compelled the English King to recognize the supremacy of the divine law over his arbitrary will. The absolutist monarch inherited from Roman law was thereby counteracted and transformed into a monarch explicitly under the law.

According to Charles Francis: “In England the Lord Chancellor played an important part in the development of common law rights. Those Chancellors were all Christians, and a number were ordained. Consequently the common law which evolved had a strong Christian basis. In passing it is interesting to note that even as late as 1932 in discussing the common law of negligence in England’s highest court Lord Atkin referred to the biblical question “Who is my neighbour?” He said in law the answer seems to be “persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called into question”.

In fact, the Christian faith provided to the people of England a status libertatis (state of liberty) which rested on the Christian presumption that God’s law always works for the good of society. With their conversion to Christianity, the kings of England would no longer possess an arbitrary power over the life and property of individuals, changing the basic laws of the kingdom at pleasure. Rather, they were told about God’s promise in the book Isaiah, to deal with civil authorities who enact unjust laws (Isaiah 10:1). In fact, the Bible contains many passages condemning the perversion of justice by them (Prov 17:15, 24:23; Exo 23:7; Deut 16:18; Hab 1:4; Isa 60:14; Lam 3:34).

According to the English constitutionalist O.H. Philips:
“Historically, the concept of the rule of law was, first used with reference to a belief in the existence of law possessing higher authority – whether divine or natural – than that o f the law promulgated by human rulers which imposed limits on their powers. It was probably in this sense that Aristotle expressed the view that “the rule of the law is preferable to that of any individual”. Bracton, writing in the thirteenth century adopted the theory generally held in the Middle Ages that the world was governed by law, human or divine; and that “the King himself ought not be subject to man but subject to God and to the law, because the law makes him king”. The same view is also expressed in the Year of Books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Such superior law governed kings as well as subjects and set limits to the prerogative. On that ground Fortescue, in the middle of the fifteenth century, based his argument that there could be no taxation without the consent of Parliament”.

And in explaining why the citizens of England had much more freedom than their French counterparts, Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) declared:
‘There is not land beneath the sun where there is an open Bible and a preached gospel, where a tyrant long can hold his place … Let the Bible be opened to be read by all men, and no tyrant can long rule in peace. England owes her freedom to the Bible; and France will never possess liberty, lasting and well-established, till she comes to reverence the gospel, which too long has rejected … The religion of Jesus makes men think, and to make men think is always dangerous to a despot’s power.’

In saying so, however, I must necessarily add that Christianity is focused not just on rights but also on Biblically derived concepts of duties and responsibilities.

In reality, the Biblical concept of justice has more to do with encouraging personal duties in protecting the weak, the poor, the widows, than it does with asking ‘rights’ from the government. This principle also reflects the democratic maturity of a free society, whereby the initiative (and creativity) of citizens is respected, and free from the excesses of government paternalism.

Augusto Zimmermann

The aggressive minorities tout the new rights as inalienable rights. Nonsense! The very use of the word “inalienable” makes a mockery of the term. Each of these new rights is legislated and just as easily as they are created, they can also be repealed. In fact, the second stage of implementation of the Human Rights Charter in Victoria will only come into force on January 1 2008, and yet it is already scheduled for review to see if the rights need to be alterned or expanded. Hence, these rights are not attributed to a man by virtue that he is a man, but are merely the creation of society through the legislature and subsequently subject to the whim of the legislature. As social attitudes change (and consequently what is politically correct), so will the rights be changed (either by the legislature or through interpretation by the courts) to meet changing social attitudes. In other words, the so called inalienable rights are quite alienable.

The only real rights are those founded on God’s truth. He created a natural order for the raising of children that the aggressive minorities show a complete distaste for. But the evidence against their rhetoric is mounting and they will not be able to avoid it forever. I am with you in hoping that one day soon sanity will return.

Frank Norros

Robert Phillips, Melton

But there is plenty more where that came from. Blogsites are not easily conducive to footnoting and proper referencing. There is so much data on this and related material that I need to put it all into book form. It is too much for short articles here.

As to these references, the first is this: The Los Angeles Times, August 25-26, 1985, but I can hunt up the rest of the reference. And the second is this: Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, vol. 18, Spring,1992, pp. 34-43.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch